Winning a cup and losing the sack race is success for Shiels

Saturday 5 May 2012

Kenny Shiels believes his Kilmarnock team should be recognised as "the club of the year" as they defied pre-season predictions of relegation to win the Scottish Communities League Cup and now look favourites to finish in seventh position in the Clydesdale Bank Premier League.

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Shiels added that he was the bookies' favourite to be the first manager to lose his job this season and that he rebuilt his squad with signings from the lower leagues in England last summer.

"I think we have been the club of the year, when you look at where we came from," said the Kilmarnock manager, when asked to assess their season. "What you have to do when you are summing up how a team has performed is look at what their inheritance was at the beginning of the season."When you are signing players from Yeovil, Scunthorpe, York, Luton and bringing them together and you are seventh in the league with two games to go and you have won a cup – and beaten one of the Old Firm in the final – the answer to the question is quite obvious."I think we have done fantastic, that hasn't been acknowledged as much as it should have been, but we know how well we have done and that's all that matters."Asked if he would feel the same way regardless of how the final two SPL games went, he replied: "Yes, and why not? I don't see how anyone could think any different. How could they when we were being tipped for relegation? In the sack race I was favourite to lose my job. People forget it was less than two years ago that Kilmarnock were fighting a relegation battle in the last game of the season against Falkirk. These things should be remembered."Manuel Pascali, Shiels' captain, said the Hampden victory over Celtic was the reason he agreed to a new three-year contract, even though he missed the final due to a broken leg from which he is still recovering. The 30-year-old defender said: "I will be here for the next three years, which will make it seven years in total. We started to talk about a new contract around November but March 18 made my decision final. After what we achieved that day, and seeing so many supporters being very nice to me, my wife and family said, 'You can't leave this', and I agreed. I will try my best to have another day like that."Kilmarnock can secure the top position in the bottom six if results go their way, with Aberdeen visiting Rugby Park after back-to-back defeats by the two teams fighting relegation, Dunfermline Athletic and Hibernian. Craig Brown, their manager, has confirmed he will be talking to Jonny Hayes, the Inverness Caledonian Thistle winger, about a possible Bosman free transfer in the next week or two, and is discussing transfers with other players approaching the end of their contracts.Brown said: "He [Hayes] won't sign for anyone certainly without coming and seeing us. He's given that undertaking and I'm sure he'll honour that."He added: "There are other talks going on, but the players are with clubs at the moment and they're out of contract. I always advise the manager [of the player's current club] out of courtesy."However, Brown admitted that progress at Pittodrie has been slow after another disappointing season. He said: "There's improvement in as much as we're a point more than we were and we've got two games left. We were comfortably clear of the relegation issue more quickly than last year, but it's not been a good season. However, it has been horrendously disturbed by injury. No other club has experienced the amount of injuries that we've had. That's not an excuse, it's an explanation."

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Winning a cup and losing the sack race is success for Shiels

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